ATLANTIS SHELVES LICENSE FEE FOR MOST PHYSICIANS AT JFK

The controversy over an occupational license fee on all John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital doctors is evaporating as city officials have decided, for now, to simply not enforce it.

Only physicians who have offices in the city of Atlantis have been billed $62.50, City Clerk Betty Yon said.

But doctors on staff at JFK whose offices are elsewhere have not been charged the fee as they were last year. Most of JFK's 220 physicians have offices outside Atlantis.

The City Council approved a revised occupational license fee ordinance last week changing some wording, including all references to "regulating doctors," that City Attorney Donald Sasser said was outdated and might cause a problem in court.

The fee imposed on doctors was left unchanged as were fees imposed on the members of many other professions and occupations. But only physicians have not been sent bills as of Sept. 1.

Sasser warned that imposing the fees on everyone except the doctors could establish a precedent of discrimination that might lead to other groups refusing to pay.

Mayor Joe Veaner said Tuesday the council decided not to send out the bills this fall to JFK doctors without offices in the city because "we have more pressing problems and we just didn't want to have to deal with that right now."

Veaner cited the current budget adoption and amending the city's comprehensive land-use plan as more urgent than dealing with the doctors' occupational license fees.

"We'll deal with the license fee issue later," Veaner said.

But one source, asking not to be identified, said the majority of the council would prefer to let the matter die quietly so the city can save face and also end the controversy.

Doctors were the only ones who protested the fee in recent years. Dr. Ned Stevens, JFK chief of staff, led the strong chorus of objection to the license fee. The doctors hired attorney Martin Flanagan of Jones and Foster, a West Palm Beach law firm, and considered filing suit.

One of the more vocal objectors was state Rep. Dr. Bernard Kimmel. Kimmel, whose doctor's office is in Lake Clarke Shores and who practices at JFK, sent his payment with a stinging denunciation charging the policy was illegal.

Kimmel said Tuesday he has since been advised by the Florida Attorney General's Office and Flanagan's office that previous court rulings have held such fees imposed on doctors to be illegal.

Acting on City Attorney Sasser's advice that he believed the ordinance would withstand a court challenge, the council refused to back down.

Kimmel also challenged the council's motivation for imposing the fee. "My major objection was that, no question about it, the City Council did this to get back at JFK Hospital. The hospital had backed down on how much money it would pay Atlantis for additional police protection and for its impact on city services, and the city tried to get even by taxing the doctors," Kimmel said.

Council members have vehemently denied that was their motivation. council member Steve Moore said the fee, on the books since the mid-1970s, was enforced last fall because the council needed to find additional revenue sources to finance city services.

Recently, the city and the hospital came to terms on an annual fee JFK will pay Atlantis to compensate for city services needed because of the hospital.